Boost Email Open Rates with These Great Techniques

Email open rates matter a lot.  Email marketers put a lot of effort into making emails friendly, compelling and loaded with great offers, but all of that is pointless if your potential reader does not open your emails in the first place.

Open rates are a baseline metric in email marketing. It’s a simple issues: to get eyes on your content and pitch, you need people to open your email.

There are a number of ways to boost open rates, from customized subject lines to fine-tuning your message.

Identify Yourself Clearly to Subscribers

Make sure email readers know who you are, up front.  Your “from name” should be friendly and properly identify you.  Use an email address readers will recognize so there’s no confusion why they’re receiving your email in the first place.

If your email open rates are below the industry average or falling fast, it could be because your readers do not know who sent your emails. Identity-at-a-glance is important with email marketing — not only to increase name recognition, but also to prevent recipients from marking your emails as spam.

Consider the Timing of Your Email Campaigns

Once your readers recognize you, the next step is to grab their attention quickly. Most people check email on a regular basis, but inboxes can be crowded. You want your message to stand out.

One of the things rookie email marketers often overlook is the role of timing with email open rates. The optimal time to reach readers may vary from market to market and even company to company, but there are ways to solve the puzzle.

YNOT Mail customers have access to data indicating when emails are opened, and this information should be used to target customers. If you see most of your readers are opening their emails on Friday afternoons during working hours, that is when to send your emails.

After you have identified the best time to send emails, you need to be consistent. Send your campaigns around the same time, on the same day(s) of the week. Eventually your readers will watching for them. Over time, and if your content is good, your customers will look forward to hearing from you.

Subject Lines Impact Email Open Rates

Now that your readers know who you are and when you will be emailing them, it’s time to reel them in with compelling subject lines. Subject lines are tricky.  You only have so much text to play with in a subject line, so every word counts.

Using numbers and punctuation can get your readers’ attention. If your brand is hip enough then you can try playing around with emjois in the subject line. Just be careful not to go overboard. Subject lines filled with emojis, spurious punctuation and other unusual characters may cause readers — and their email service providers — to label your messages as spam.

Humor and personalization always work well, as do urgency. Try to convey that your offer is time-sensitive and readers must buy-in quickly or your offer will expire.

If writing good copy isn’t your strength, try focusing on good subject lines. If you need inspiration then you can always look at your own inbox to see what catches your eye.

Experiment

Remember that you can experiment. Pro and VIP tier customers can A-B test every email, and then learn from the results. Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. Learn from your mistakes and make each campaign better than the one that came before it.